Why we have not allowed Toviho to graduate – LASU VC

Eromosele Ebhomele

The Vice Chancellor of the Lagos State University, Professor John Obafunwa has defended the institution’s refusal to graduate Mr. Toviho Oluwaseyi Ezekiel, a student who has been facing disciplinary action from the institution.

Toviho was said to have been made to re-write a paper for allegedly engaging in examination malpractice in 2010 when he was in year one.

He said he eventually went through the programme, only to be told four years after and upon graduation that he could not go for his National Youth Service Corps programme for involving in exam malpractice.

In a petition Toviho wrote to the Lagos State House of Assembly in 2014, Toviho alleged that authorities of LASU failed to submit his name for NYSC programme even when his results had been released by the school.

After looking into the issue, the House wrote a resolution to the school and advised the management to allow Toviho graduate and go for his NYSC Programme on compassionate grounds.

But Professor Obafunwa told an ad-hoc committee of the House headed by Gbolahan Yishawu at a meeting at the Assembly complex that the Toviho’s case had not been revisited due to the dissolution of the Governing Council of the institution in April, 2015.

Professor Obafunwa said that he actually conveyed the message of the lawmakers to the Governing Council of the institution before it was dissolved.

“I raised the issue at the Governing Council meeting and I called the attention of our Pro-Chancellor to it.

“But they said that the House of Assembly should not be appealing to them on the issue since the student could make a direct appeal to the council.

“They said that they would attend to the matter if Toviho makes a personal appeal to them in writing.

“I later learnt that he wrote an appeal letter to the council, but it didn’t get to them due to the crisis in the institution before the council was eventually dissolved,” he said.

The Vice Chancellor said that a lawmaker in the Assembly actually called him on the phone on the matter and that the lawmaker later had a meeting with him at the school’s College of Medicine.

He promised that the matter would be re-visited, when the council is re-constituted.

Yishawu, who was the Vice Chairman of the Committee on Education in the seventh Assembly, however said there ought to be an alternate body that could handle such an issue if the Governing Council is not in place.

He added that the laws guiding the institution would have to be re-visited if there is no such an arrangement in the system.

“I feel the Vice Chancellor should have some powers in this regard or may be the university does not want to use its powers in this regard because we wrote an appeal letter to the Governing Council based on the advice of the Vice Chancellor.

“If things like these are delayed, it means other issues would suffer until the Governing Council is constituted,” he said.